The amazingly unlikely true story of how a grumpy old man and lifelong bachelor won the love of a beautiful young woman and started a family – and all by writing a curmudgeonly blog about his lonely journey to the grave.

Now who would have predicted that?

Friday, 29 January 2010

Good money after bad

15st 8lb, 2.25 units. I spent most of the day sitting at my desk in Northumberland, looking at the gatepost and my agent’s attached "Under Offer" sign waving gently in the breeze. On the one hand it does offer some entertainment and instruction as a weather vane, but on the other it has been over three months since I took the property off the market, so I suppose I ought to do something about getting it removed. A visitor the other day suggested that I should start charging the appropriate market rent for an advertising hoarding, since the fact that they had managed to obtain an offer for my house provided the most fantastic recommendation for my agents, suggesting that they could sell almost anything. This seemed a little unkind about my much-loved home of 22 years, I must say.

So far, since taking the house off the market, I have identified at least £10,000 worth of essential repairs to the place. I was blissfully unaware of the need for these when I cancelled the sale, but assumed that the prospective purchaser had spotted them, given that he is a qualified chartered surveyor and had pitched his offer well below my asking price. However, he has assured me that the need for them came as news to him, too. And how much will it add to the potential value of the place when I have repaired or replaced all the worn-out windows and collapsing shed roofs?

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About Me

Keith Hann is a serial quitter: professionally as a historian (the last days of the British Empire), then an investment analyst (the last days of the British food industry) and finally as a financial public relations consultant (the last days of pretty much any company that was deluded enough to hire him). In each case he packed it in just when there might have been some chance of making a few quid out of it. Then there is his personal life score: engagements 4, marriages 1. For the last few years Keith has been indulging himself as a hobby journalist. It seems unlikely that he will ever make a living out of this. And if he ever shows signs of making it Big, his resignation will be going straight into the post. In November 2007 Keith started blogging (a) to take the mickey out of the genre, (b) because a misguided friend told him that it was the ideal way to secure his Big Break as a writer, and (c) to chronicle the final days of a dying breed of solitary English curmudgeon. Nothing remarkable about any of that, except that it somehow convinced a beautiful, funny young woman that she had finally met the man of her dreams. As we always say Up North, there’s nowt so queer as folk.